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Somehow Gagarin managed to find time for a shower, a semi-quiet stroll by the Volga and a proper meal, all the while being charming and helpful to his endless interlocutors. At a preliminary press conference he gave his impressions of the earth from space: ‘The day side of the earth was clearly visible – the coasts of continents, islands, big rivers, large surfaces of water. I saw for the first time with my own eyes the earth’s spherical shape. I must say, the view of the horizon was unique and very beautiful.’ Then he described a sunset as it appeared from orbit, and the incredible delicacy of the earth’s atmosphere seen edge-on. ‘You can see the colourful change from the brightness of the earth to the darkness of space as a thin dividing line, like a layer of film surrounding the earth’s sphere. It’s a subtle blue colour, and the transition is very gradual and lovely. When I emerged from the earth’s shadow there was a bright orange strip along the horizon, which passed into blue, and then into a dense black.’6

Some correspondents (and even a few of the cosmonauts) found it hard to come to terms with Gagarin’s eloquent description of a sunrise and sunset all happening within the space of ninety minutes (Vostok’s basic orbital period, not allowing for the boost and deceleration phases). Nor did many people understand what he meant by the ‘earth’s shadow’. The adventure of space flight – so commonplace now – seemed very magical and strange in 1961.

In the evening, when all but the most intimate colleagues had at last been sent on their way, Gagarin played a quiet game of billiards with Cosmonaut Two: a polite but subdued Gherman Titov. ‘I still feel jealous, right up until now,’ Titov admits. ‘I have a very explosive character. I could easily say rude things, offend someone and walk away, but Yuri Alexeyevich could talk freely to anyone – Pioneers [boy scouts], workers, scientists, farmers. He could speak their language, you see? I was jealous of it.’ Yet they were pilots both. They would always have that in common. And mutual respect, if not an absolute love. They played billiards and Gherman listened with genuine interest as Gagarin explained certain events of his flight. With that success now stamped into the pages of history for ever, at least Cosmonaut Two could be sure of his own chance of flying in space during the next few months. Vostok was proven, and Korolev’s ‘Little Seven’ seemed to be working more reliably now, after its somewhat frisky adolescence. However, the dacha’s billiard room may have been too public a place for Gagarin to go into details about the equipment module’s failure to separate properly. That was an unpleasantness that Titov would have to discover for himself. He does not specifically remember Gagarin warning him about it in advance.

One persistent journalist snapped some informal shots of Gagarin under the dim lights of the billiard room before being sent on his way. ‘Surely that’s enough, now,’ Titov said.

It wasn’t nearly enough.

Next day Korolev, Kamanin, Keldysh and the other members of the State Committee convened at the dacha and took evidence from Gagarin about his flight. Behind closed doors he felt free to describe the retro-pack problem in detail. To this day there is no clear explanation as to why the issue wasn’t resolved in time for Titov’s flight on August 6. Probably an alteration was made, but it simply did not work. The data cables from the rear equipment module slotted into a large round plate on the ball, through a plug with seventeen pins, each consisting of an array of smaller pins, so that eighty separate electrical connections were made in all. It was no simple matter to eject such a complicated plug. These and similar basic mechanical problems dogged the early years of Russia’s space effort.7

In America, NASA’s engineers also recognized the difficulty of separating re-entry capsules after a flight. Like the Russians, they relied on thick bundles of wires for connecting the capsules to their support